A black conservative's place for independent thinking and common sense -- A little oasis for those who got caught up in the momentum of the civil rights movement, but failed to discern the false from the true

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

The feminist loons are at it again, as some of their leading lights join their efforts to those of a quasi-"criminal justice" system, in a common quest to bring down Julian Assange.
And, of course, it all makes sense. Take a man home with you, in fact, take him into your bed, and then charge him with rape, when the sex doesn't come off exactly as you prefer. Did he break through your window and assault you? Were you forcibly pushed into your apartment, as you unlocked your door? Did he drug you against your will? No, to all these speculations. But, to determined man-haters, that's all beside the point.

Proving that not every woman who professes feminist sensibilities is a whack job, author Naomi Wolf takes on the case of Assange and the spurious "rape" charges against him. Or, more accurately, the "rape" allegations. In a caustic letter to Interpol, the so-called international police force, Wolf mocks this ridiculous organization's arrest of Assange and his placement at the top of its "Most Wanted List." Referring to Interpol as the "World's Dating Police," she wrote,

Dear Interpol:
As a longtime feminist activist, I have been overjoyed to discover your new commitment to engaging in global manhunts to arrest and prosecute men who behave like narcissistic jerks to women they are dating.

I see that Julian Assange is accused of having consensual sex with two women, in one case using a condom that broke. I understand, from the alleged victims' complaints to the media, that Assange is also accused of texting and tweeting in the taxi on the way to one of the women's apartments while on a date, and, disgustingly enough, 'reading stories about himself online' in the cab.

Both alleged victims are also upset that he began dating a second woman while still being in a relationship with the first. (Of course, as a feminist, I am also pleased that the alleged victims are using feminist-inspired rhetoric and law to assuage what appears to be personal injured feelings. That's what our brave suffragette foremothers intended!).

Thank you again, Interpol. I know you will now prioritize the global manhunt for 1.3 million guys I have heard similar complaints about personally in the US alone -- there is an entire fraternity at the University of Texas you need to arrest immediately. I also have firsthand information that John Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, went to a stag party -- with strippers! -- that his girlfriend wanted him to skip, and that Mark Levinson in Corvallis, Oregon, did not notice that his girlfriend got a really cute new haircut -- even though it was THREE INCHES SHORTER.

Terrorists. Go get 'em, Interpol!

Yours gratefully,
Naomi Wolf

Is there anything more bitter than a woman scorned? Yes, two women scorned! Julian Assange has had to learn this the hard way.

As a follow-up to her letter, Wolf expressed her outrage at those who are exploiting the tragedy of genuine rape, in order to punish the founder of the WikiLeaks whistle blowing website. Following are excerpts:

• • •

How do I know that Interpol, Britain and Sweden's treatment of Julian Assange is a form of theater? Because I know what happens in rape accusations against men that don't involve the embarrassing of powerful governments.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is in solitary confinement in Wandsworth prison in advance of questioning on state charges of sexual molestation. Lots of people have opinions about the charges. But I increasingly believe that only those of us who have spent years working with rape and sexual assault survivors worldwide, and know the standard legal response to sex crime accusations, fully understand what a travesty this situation is against those who have to live through how sex crime charges are ordinarily handled -- and what a deep, even nauseating insult this situation is to survivors of rape and sexual assault worldwide. ...

I have spent two decades traveling the world reporting on and interviewing survivors of sexual assault, and their advocates, in countries as diverse as Sierra Leone and Morocco, Norway and Holland, Israel and Jordan and the Occupied Territories, Bosnia and Croatia, Britain, Ireland and the United States.

I tell you this as a recorder of firsthand accounts. Tens of thousand of teenage girls were kidnapped at gunpoint and held as sex slaves in Sierra Leone during that country's civil war. They were tied to trees and to stakes in the ground and raped by dozens of soldiers at a time. Many of them were as young as twelve or thirteen. Their rapists are free.

I met a fifteen-year-old girl who risked her life to escape from her captor in the middle of the night, taking the baby that resulted from her rape by hundreds of men. She walked from Liberia to a refugee camp in Sierra Leone, barefoot and bleeding, living on roots in the bush. Her rapist, whose name she knows, is free.

Women -- and girls -- are drugged, kidnapped and trafficked by the tens of thousands for the sex industry in Thailand and across Eastern Europe. They are held as virtual prisoners by pimps. If you interview the women who spend their lives trying to rescue and rehabilitate them, they attest to the fact that these women's kidnappers and rapists are well known to local and even national authorities -- but these men never face charges. These rapists are free.

In the Bosnian conflict, rape was a weapon of war. Women were imprisoned in barracks utilized for this purpose, and raped, again at gunpoint, for weeks at a time. They could not escape. Minimalist hearings after the conflict resulted in slap-on-the-wrist sentences for a handful of perpetrators. The vast majority of rapists, whose names are known, did not face charges. The military who condoned these assaults, whose names are known, are free.

Never in twenty-three years of reporting on and supporting victims of sexual assault around the world have I ever heard of a case of a man sought by two nations, and held in solitary confinement without bail in advance of being questioned -- for any alleged rape, even the most brutal or easily proven. In terms of a case involving the kinds of ambiguities and complexities of the alleged victims' complaints -- sex that began consensually that allegedly became non-consensual when dispute arose around a condom -- please find me, anywhere in the world, another man in prison today without bail on charges of anything comparable. ...

For all the tens of thousands of women who have been kidnapped and raped, raped at gunpoint, gang-raped, raped with sharp objects, beaten and raped, raped as children, raped by acquaintances -- who are still awaiting the least whisper of justice -- the highly unusual reaction of Sweden and Britain to this situation is a slap in the face. It seems to send the message to women in the UK and Sweden that if you ever want anyone to take sex crime against you seriously, you had better be sure the man you accuse of wrongdoing has also happened to embarrass the most powerful government on earth. ...

Interpol, Britain and Sweden must, if they are not to be guilty of hateful manipulation of a serious women's issue for cynical political purposes, imprison as well -- at once -- the hundreds of thousands of men in Britain, Sweden and around the world who are accused in far less ambiguous terms of far graver forms of assault.

Anyone who works in supporting women who have been raped knows from this grossly disproportionate response that Britain and Sweden, surely under pressure from the US, are cynically using the serious issue of rape as a ﬁg leaf to cover the shameful issue of mafioso-like global collusion in silencing dissent. That is not the State embracing feminism. That is the State pimping feminism.

On his blog, Dennis Mangan conducted a lively discussion about today's American military and nationalist sentiment. He tells how his views on the military have altered over time, as this country's "foreign military adventure has become the American military's main mission." He writes:

The great swath of red state supporters of "our troops" have become dupes in our government's mission of forever being at war abroad, with little discernible national interest involved. On the contrary, I'd say the war in Afghanistan, for example, actively hurts our national interest.

Patriotism, said Johnson, is the last refuge of a scoundrel, and in the U.S., the scoundrels have decidedly taken refuge in it, and have co-opted the real patriots' support of the military into support for their endless wars abroad. One needs to distinguish between the military as a bulwark of the American nation and as a tool of the government, and too many Americans can't make this distinction.

Like most Americans, I've supported the military and had a positive attitude toward it for most of my life, but in recent years I've come to think that the majority of wars that we've fought in our history have been huge mistakes, actions of the government that furthered its own interests, not those of the nation as a whole.

In this same spirit, Brad Birzer, reviewing Tom Engelhardt's book, The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's, for The American Conservative magazine, claims that the relaxation of the Cold War during Ronald Reagan's tenure should have offered the West "some breathing room," that is, "a time to rethink the purpose of our nation and reinvigorate republican ideals."

Instead, Birzer maintains, "the past two decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, have revealed America and the West as morally and spiritually bankrupt. Plunder and torture best symbolize the bloated American Empire of the last 20 years, a force that exists merely for the sake of self-perpetuation." He further observes:

• • •

When voters elected Barack Obama in 2008, his supporters acclaimed him higher than a prophet; he was messianic. ... What the Obama administration has delivered, of course, is not only the continuation of the policies of the previous three administrations but a profound exaggeration of them. If anything, we suffer more violations of our privacy and civil liberties now than at any time during the Bush administration, all in the name of a national-security state that keeps the populace in its place while perpetuating war abroad. ...

[In his book], Tom Englehardt probes deeply into the war culture of Washington, D.C. As Englehardt writes, when it comes to conflict overseas “however contentious the disputes in Washington, however dismally the public viewed the war, however much the president’s war coalition might threaten to crack open, the only choices were between more and more.” More drones, more troops, more nation-building. So much for campaign promises and the new messiah who would end war and poverty permanently.

The first military budget Obama submitted, Engelhardt notes, was larger than the last one tendered by the Bush administration. “Because the United States does not look like a militarized country, it’s hard for Americans to grasp that Washington is a war capital, that the United States is a war state, that it garrisons much of the planet, and that the norm for us is to be at war somewhere (usually, in fact, many places) at any moment.” ...

As further evidence of our degeneration into a martial empire, the U.S. sells 70 percent of the weapons in the international arms trade. In almost every way, Engelhardt contends, the United States precipitates the militarization of the globe.

How far and fast we’ve fallen since the relatively peaceful days of the Reagan era. Four interventionist administrations later, we find ourselves as the leaders of international vice and terror. What happened, Englehardt asks, to the republic our Founders bequeathed to us? What have we done with and to our inheritance? ...

Engelhardt develops the fascinating argument that the history of the past 11 decades is the history of the airplane and our use of it for war, from the Sopwith Camel to the drone piloted remotely out of Las Vegas. In rather Chomsky-like (or perhaps Orwellian) fashion, one of Engelhardt’s later chapters explores the perversion of words in the English language to make the idea of war more palatable for the public and keep perpetual conflict “hidden in plain sight.” Engelhardt claims the Bush administration redefined patriotism and American identity, polarizing the country. Anyone who challenged the war, the Bush line went, must either be a “wuss” or a traitor.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Let's face it. Americans who so willingly accept silence and secrecy from our government rulers do not want the responsibility of thinking too deeply about what others might be doing in their name. Why be forced to make decisions about reprehensible, inhumane actions performed under the guise of patriotism?
How wrong this country's Founders were to believe that its citizens would welcome an open society, in order to keep government functionaries on a leash, to see what they were up to at all times. The Founders sought to insure that these dignitaries, from congressional representatives to military bureaucrats, and their multitude of hirelings, would be answerable to the people, not the other way around.

In Focus on the Policy, Not WikiLeaks, Congressman Ron Paul declares, "In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, however, we are in big trouble." He writes:

• • •

At its core, the WikiLeaks controversy serves as a diversion from the real issue of what our foreign policy should be. But the mainstream media, along with neoconservatives from both political parties, insist on asking the wrong question. When presented with embarrassing disclosures about U.S. spying and meddling, the policy that requires so much spying and meddling is not questioned. Instead, the media focus on how so much sensitive information could have been leaked, or how authorities might prosecute the publishers of such information.

No one questions the status quo or suggests a wholesale rethinking of our foreign policy. No one suggests that the White House or the State Department should be embarrassed that the U.S. engages in spying and meddling. The only embarrassment is that it was made public. This allows ordinary people to actually know and talk about what the government does. But state secrecy is anathema to a free society. Why exactly should Americans be prevented from knowing what their government is doing in their name?

The truth is that our foreign spying, meddling, and outright military intervention in the post–World War II era has made us less secure, not more. And we have lost countless lives and spent trillions of dollars for our trouble. Too often "official" government lies have provided justification for endless, illegal wars and hundreds of thousands of resulting deaths and casualties.

Take the recent hostilities in Korea as only one example. More than fifty years after the end of the Korean War, American taxpayers continue to spend billions for the U.S. military to defend a modern and wealthy South Korea. The continued presence of the U.S. military places American lives between the two factions. The U.S. presence only serves to prolong the conflict, further drain our empty treasury, and place our military at risk. ...

There is always an enemy to slay, whether communist or terrorist. In the neoconservative vision, a constant state of alarm must be fostered among the people to keep them focused on something greater than themselves – namely their great protector, the state. This is why the neoconservative reaction to the WikiLeaks revelations is so predictable: “See, we told you the world was a dangerous place,” goes the story. They claim we must prosecute – or even assassinate – those responsible for publishing the leaks. And we must redouble our efforts to police the world by spying and meddling better, with no more leaks.

We should view the WikiLeaks controversy in the larger context of American foreign policy. Rather than worry about the disclosure of embarrassing secrets, we should focus on our delusional foreign policy. We are kidding ourselves when we believe spying, intrigue, and outright military intervention can maintain our international status as a superpower while our domestic economy crumbles in an orgy of debt and monetary debasement.

Related - More by Ron Paul

Don't Start Another Korean WarSouth Korean leaders, emboldened by the U.S. protection, seek to provoke North Korean reaction rather than to work for a way to finally end the conflict

Sunday, December 12, 2010

How painful it must have been for National Public Radio (NPR) to fire a person of color. For a network whose major reason for being centers around pandering to, condescending to, and promoting all racial coloreds (most especially blacks), terminating the contract of Juan Williams, regardless of past gripes with him, must have caused much anguish. It would not be surprising if most of the staff felt inclined to spend some time in counseling.
Here in New York City, NPR programming is distributed through station WNYC, a clone that is indistinguishable from NPR in its icky editorial policies and its overall politics. In listening to the never-ending programs of racial proselytizing and racial handholding, it's hard to know where NPR leaves off and WNYC begins.

There's hardly a program that does not somehow tangentially include some kind of encomium to blacks. No matter the subject, no matter the period in history, no matter the figure under discussion, at least every couple of hours there must be a remembrance of the wrongs done to blacks. To fail to remember such wrongs can only be construed as gross neglect and racism.

When someone like Rush Limbaugh claims that NPR's programming has little to do with blacks, they just don't get it. Yes, white hosts dominate the broadcasts and, yes, they appear to be focusing on what might seem to be white-oriented themes, but listen more closely. There are no two consecutive hours when the racial grievances of the coloreds are not explored. Is there a program about cooking and restaurants? Well, wait until you hear about all those good jobs that were denied to black chefs. Is there a program about camping and outdoor life? Well, wait until you hear about how unwelcome blacks feel in the environment of national parks and the lack of "inclusiveness."

The point is that the whites who listen to NPR-NYC want to hear endless colored sob stories, no matter the initial story themes, and NPR-NYC delivers.

Limbaugh mocks NPR-NYC by claiming that there is only one black-hosted program, "Tell Me More." However, he is wrong. Besides this show, there are two weekend programs hosted by the black Tavis Smiley. On Saturday it's the "Tavis Smiley" show, and on Sundays Smiley co-hosts another program with Princeton Professor Cornel West. Both programs are non-stop colored grievance machines.

What Limbaugh does not understand is that there is no need for black hosts, since the white ones will do more than their share to keep the colored themes prominent. After all, whites love this stuff, so obviously it's good for ratings.

Even when a story focuses on a white figure, such as a popular sportsman, who has been accused of indiscreet or immoral conduct, the underlying idea conveyed is that it's not only black men who are "bad boys." Look at that bad, immoral white man!

As part of the daily pablum, ways are found to elevate the public image of the coloreds, while denigrating traditions or customs attributed to whites. After all, what kind of customs could be worthy of praise if those customs failed to include colored people?

One of my favorite NPR-NYC programs was cited in my 2008 post, Those quaint Indians, in which the white host was flummoxed when two men from India insisted that they preferred to return to their homeland to choose wives from among their own race and traditions. What could be more politically incorrect than such a notion? Is there a greater no-no among the NPR-NYC crowd than disdaining full and total integration? You refuse to mix it up socially? Won't date someone of another race? Well, now, we all know what that makes you!

Do we find enlightenment in any of this programming? On a recent Smiley-West show, a black man called in to tell the truth about who he has to worry about whenever he's on the streets, that is, other blacks who only want to "take from him" and harm him. And what is Brother Cornel West's response to such frankness? He informs the caller that the reason for this seemingly negative behavior on the part of blacks is due to the 19th century Confederacy, where blacks were "terrorized and traumatized." And that, Brothers and Sisters, is your enlightenment for the day.

Needless to say, sacred organizations like the NAACP and the many other civil rights bloviaters, who preach the party line on race, are prominent, frequent guests on NPR-NYC. The black-hosted "Tell Me More," includes "The Barbershop," a segment that is laden with conventional civil rights stories. You might think that you've bumped across some re-play of an old 1970s tape when listening to the whining about "injustice," but, no, it's just another day in the life of NPR-NYC.

And so we learn of the reality that has come to Sweden. Having avoided terrorist attacks in the past, two explosions on December 11, in busy shopping centers in Stockholm, brought an end to the calm.
Such attacks can no longer come as a surprise to those countries that, like Sweden, are aiding and abetting the Americans' wars against Middle East Arabs. Ongoing assaults will probably become as common in foreign lands as attacks against the invading American troops in Arab territories. Arabs are simply saying to the Swedes, "If you join with our U.S. enemy to help them in their invasions against us, then you, too, will pay the price."

Or, to use the very words of the recorded email message sent by those responsible for the Stockholm attacks: “Now, your children — daughters and sisters — will die like our brothers and sisters and children die."

Would Americans consider this unreasonable, if a years-long invasion was underway on U.S. soil and Canada allied with the invaders and sent its troops to help kill Americans?

Last month, Sweden's foolish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt claimed that plans were underway to withdraw Swedish combat forces from Afghanistan over the next four years. Four years?! Now how much terrorist damage do you think can be done to the Swedish people over four years? The Swedes ought to run Reinfeldt out of town.

These years of military actions, in which thousands of young American men have died and tens of thousands of Arabs have perished, are totally meaningless to the American cause. They are for nothing! What possible meaning can this gross injustice hold for the Swedes? What folly. Read more!

Do we have to do this again? Every single year, in December?
Well, yes, the story with its assorted lies must be told over and over, to make sure it remains part of the American myth. What else makes white men feel so good about themselves other than that monumental WWII, that supposedly saved the world? The war where they got to kill off hundreds of thousands of other white men, along with some yellow ones -- for the sake of what exactly? Perhaps just for the sake of being able to brag to future generations about their superior courage and military prowess, and to make all those repetitious and insufferable Hollywood war movies.

Higgs writes: "It behooves every educated American to learn this honest history and to pass it along to others when an opportunity arises, because the myth has long contributed, and continues to contribute, to a false view of the U.S. place in the world and to a grave misunderstanding of U.S. foreign policy.

"Ceaseless dissemination and widespread acceptance of this view is the very model of how the U.S. government tends to do foreign policy: provoke foreigners to attack Americans, then tell the American people that foreigners have attacked us for no reason and therefore we must strike back to defeat them or at least to teach them a lesson about treating the United States with deference."

Will it ever be possible to return the American economy to what it was like when the U.S. was a leading manufacturer of goods? Or does offshoring spell doom for the American future? And is China really the problem?
In American Job Loss Is Permanent, economist Paul Craig Roberts talks about the advocates of globalism who, over the years, have insisted that the offshoring of jobs by U.S. corporations increases employment and wages in the U.S. Economist Matthew Slaughter and William Cohen, a former Bill Clinton Cabinet member, have actually made this claim. In Cohen's words: “The fact is that for every job outsourced to Bangalore, nearly two jobs are created in Buffalo and other American cities.” Roberts wonders just where are these jobs in Buffalo, which no one has yet been able to locate. He writes:

• • •

The claim that jobs offshoring by US corporations increases domestic employment in the US is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated. ... Slaughter reached his erroneous conclusion by counting the growth in multinational jobs in the U.S. without adjusting the data to reflect the acquisition of existing firms by multinationals and for existing firms turning themselves into multinationals by establishing foreign operations for the first time. There was no new multinational employment in the U.S. ...

Over the last decade, the net new jobs created in the U.S. have nothing to do with multinational corporations. The jobs consist of waitresses and bartenders, health care and social services (largely ambulatory health care), retail clerks, and, while the bubble lasted, construction.

These are not the high-tech, high-paying jobs that the “New Economy” promised, and they are not jobs that can be associated with global corporations. Moreover, these domestic service jobs are themselves scarce. ...

To keep eyes off of the loss of jobs to offshoring, policymakers and their minions in the financial press blame US unemployment on alleged currency manipulation by China and on the financial crisis. The financial crisis itself is blamed by Republicans on low income Americans who took out mortgages that they could not afford.

In other words, the problem is China and the greedy American poor who tried to live above their means. With this being the American mindset, you can see why nothing can be done to save the economy.

No government will admit its mistakes, especially when it can blame foreigners. China is being made the scapegoat for American failure. An entire industry has grown up that points its finger at China and away from 20 years of corporate offshoring of US jobs and 9 years of expensive and pointless US wars. ...

The major cause of the US trade deficit with China is “globalism” or the practice, enforced by Wall Street and Wal-Mart, of US corporations offshoring their production for US markets to China in order to improve the bottom line by lowering labor costs. Most of the tariffs that the congressional idiots want to put on “Chinese” imports would, therefore, fall on the offshored production of US corporations. When these American brand goods, such as Apple computers, are brought to US markets, they enter the US as imports. Thus, the tariffs will be applied to US corporate offshored output as well as to the exports of Chinese companies to the US.

The correct conclusion is that the US trade deficit with China is the result of “globalism” or jobs offshoring, not Chinese currency manipulation.

Monday, November 29, 2010

"We can’t let go," says Pat Buchanan, referring to this country's unnecessary wars and military interventions, "because we don’t know what else to do. We live in yesterday — and our rivals look to tomorrow." This country's "patriotic" Anglo-Euro men, who love so much to fight, live in the past, and will go to war and stay at war for anyone who comes along and pulls their "USA!" chain. Throw in some sentimental jargon about "God," and you've got them hooked. As one soldier recently indicated, all a recognized "leader" has to do is point said soldier in the direction of a so-called enemy, and he becomes a willing killer. So what if it was all a mistake? No questions asked. At least it keeps unemployed men like him occupied.

This warrior has been a willing tool to fight and die a worthless death for the safety of Israel, like a good goy boy. Now we learn that Saudis, Arabs, mind you, are calling on this eager American soldier to risk his life by attacking Iran. No doubt, Mr. Tough Marine will be just as willing to die or be maimed and deformed for the benefit of A-rabs. And next will come the Koreans -- again. Just give him a weapon and point him in the direction . . . . No questions asked.

For how much longer will the world tolerate this imperial behavior on the part of these self-indulgent American "patriots?" Here are excerpts from Buchanan's latest column, Why Are We Still in Korea?:

• • •

Fifty-seven years after that armistice [in Korea, June 1953], a U.S. carrier task force is steaming toward the Yellow Sea in a show of force after the North fired 80 shells into a South Korean village. We will stand by our Korean allies, says President Obama. And with our security treaty and 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, many on the DMZ, we can do no other. But why, 60 years after the first Korean War, should Americans be the first to die in a second Korean War?

Unlike 1950, South Korea is not an impoverished ex-colony of Japan. She is the largest of all the “Asian tigers,” a nation with twice the population and 40 times the economy of the North. Seoul just hosted the G-20. And there is no Maoist China or Stalinist Soviet Union equipping Pyongyang’s armies. The planes, guns, tanks and ships of the South are far superior in quality.

Why, then, are we still in South Korea? Why is this quarrel our quarrel? Why is this war, should it come, America’s war?

High among the reasons we fought in Korea was Japan, then a nation rising from the ashes after half its cities had been reduced to rubble. But, for 50 years now, Japan has had the second largest economy and is among the most advanced nations on earth. Why cannot Japan defend herself? Why does this remain our responsibility, 65 years after MacArthur took the surrender in Tokyo Bay? ...

Why, when the Cold War has been over for 20 years, do all these Cold War alliances still exist?

Obama has just returned from a Lisbon summit of NATO, an alliance formed in 1949 to defend Western Europe from Soviet tank armies on the other side of the Iron Curtain that threatened to roll to the Channel. Today, that Red Army no longer exists, the captive nations are free, and Russia’s president was in Lisbon as an honored guest of NATO.

Yet we still have tens of thousands of U.S. troops in the same bases they were in when Gen. Eisenhower became supreme allied commander more than 60 years ago. Across Europe, our NATO allies are slashing defense to maintain social safety nets. But Uncle Sam, he soldiers on.

We borrow from Europe to defend Europe. We borrow from Japan and China to defend Japan from China. We borrow from the Gulf Arabs to defend the Gulf Arabs. ...

How to explain why America behaves as she does? ... Like an aging athlete, we keep trying to relive the glory days when all the world looked with awe upon us. We can’t let go, because we don’t know what else to do. We live in yesterday — and our rivals look to tomorrow.Read more!

On September 10, 2001, I announced on the Issues & Views website the formation of a unique coalition whose aim would be to make war on the "War on Drugs." This was on September 10, just one day before Doomsday. September 11, of course, would force the postponement and outright termination of so many prospective events and potential good works.
The new organization that did not get to breathe life was to be part of the Free Congress Foundation's "Coalition for Constitutional Liberties," and was initiated by an array of conservative thinkers and activists. It had the blessings of such stalwarts as Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation and Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum. Eagle Forum chapters in Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, Texas and Tennessee were to play leading roles in helping to expand the Coalition's reach. Among the more than two dozen groups allied with the Coalition were the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, and the Republican Leadership Council.

On September 10, Weyrich released this statement, which was sent directly to Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee:

We are part of a broad coalition of groups concerned that the war on drugs has degraded our privacy and civil liberties. We respectfully ask that the members of Committee consider raising the following privacy and civil liberties issues in connection with the nomination of John Walters to be the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (Office of the White House).

We intend by issuing this letter to signal neither support nor opposition to Mr. Walters' nomination. Rather, we are issuing this letter to urge members of the Committee to explore these issues in connection with Mr. Walters' nomination. As we set forth below, these issues include the use of new surveillance and investigative technologies, including the Carnivore/DCS1000 and Echelon systems, the "Know Your Customer" proposal of the Financial Action Task Force, asset forfeiture abuses, wiretaps and the drug war's sometimes corrupting influence on law enforcement itself.

Little did these concerned citizens know what was on the horizon, as they expressed alarm over the potential of everyone becoming a "drug suspect" due to heavy-handed government intrusions into privacy. Given what the American people are now experiencing, how quaint seem the members of this Coalition, as they complained about Amtrak giving DEA officials access to its ticketing database, along with passengers' last names, destinations, method of payment, and data on whether they were going one-way or round trip. Would any of these worthy patriots back then ever have conceived of airport body scanners?

In concluding my article on the activities planned by the Coalition, I asked, "Is it too much to hope that some day there might be a light at the end of this dark tunnel now ruled over by the DEA, BATF, FBI, and sundry other bureaucracies?" Well, yes, it was too much to hope for, as the tunnel has grown darker than ever.Read more!

Sunday, November 14, 2010

The warnings were there early on. Think whatever you wish about Saddam Hussein, yet those with an understanding of the Middle East warned back in 2003, that it was his strong-arm policies that prevented Iraq's diverse religious groups from harming one another. Hussein himself told his executioners that they would be sorry when they dispensed with him due to the social disorder that inevitably would prevail upon his death. In The Murderers of Christianity, Pat Buchanan tells us who is really responsible for the November 1 massacre of Iraqi Christians. Following are excerpts:

• • •

It was the worst massacre of Christians yet. For Assyrian Catholics known as Chaldeans, whose ancestors were converted by St. Thomas the Apostle, the U.S. war of liberation has been seven years of hell. Estimates of the number of Christians in Iraq in 2003 vary from 800,000 to 1.5 million. But hundreds of thousands have fled since the invasion. Seven of the 14 churches in Baghdad have closed, and two-thirds of the city’s 500,000 Christians are gone.

While Saddam Hussein, a secularist, had protected religious minorities, Muslim vigilantes — Shia, Sunni and Kurd, as well as al-Qaida — have attacked the Christians who have endured kidnappings, pillage, rapes, beheadings and assassinations.

And what has happened to this Christian community, which had lived peacefully alongside Muslim neighbors for centuries, must be marked down as one of the predictable and predicted consequences of America’s war in Iraq. In editor Tom Fleming’s Chronicles, just days before President Bush ordered the invasion, columnist Wayne Allensworth warned pointedly:

“Iraqi Christians fear they will be the first victims of a war that might dismember their country, unleashing ethnic and religious conflicts that Baghdad had previously suppressed. ... The Shiite uprising in southern Iraq during the first Gulf War — encouraged and then abandoned by Washington — targeted Christians. Many Christians had supported Saddam’s regime, in spite of creeping Islamicization, as their best hope of survival in the Islamic Middle East.”

Why is Christianity being murdered in its cradle by Muslim fanatics?

Multiple reasons. A return of Islamic militancy. The rise of ethnic nationalism that conflates tribal and religious identity. Hatred of America for its domination of the region, for our war on terror that they see as a war on Islam and for our support of Israel in its suppression of the Palestinians.

Christians across the Middle East are now seen as both members of an alien religion and a fifth column of the Crusaders inside their camp. Paul Marshall of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom warns that we may be in another great wave of persecution, “as Christians flee the Palestinian areas, Lebanon, Turkey, and Egypt.” Christians are gone from Jerusalem, gone from Nazareth, gone from Bethlehem. From Egypt to Iran, the Vatican counts 17 million left. ...

America remains the most Christianized of the Western nations. Yet, the protests of the White House, State Department and major media over the eradication of Christianity in the Middle East is muted. ...

Of what worth these wars for democracy if we end up freeing fanatics to annihilate communities or expel populations of our own Christian brothers and sisters across the Middle East?

Power corrupts, but does the military corrupt absolutely? Former military man (Vietnam veteran) Fred Reed offers his observations on a General's recent comments. With this new head of Central Command for a leader, what's to become of the young soldiers? Is this to be their model as they prepare to invade all those other Middle East and African countries that are sorely in need of Liberation -- Yemen, Iran, Somalia, etc? (Did I leave out a few?)

In Psychopathy Legitimized, Reed, who is no pansy, nor antiwar, expresses the view of many current and former soldiers -- at least, those who have not yet gone over to the Dark Side. Following are excerpts:

• • •

On Antiwar.com, I find a loutish American general, James Mattis, martial feminist, talking about the fun he has killing Afghans. Yes, fun, wheeee-oooo! and ooo-rah! too. He says, “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil,” adding “guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyways. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.” What must he do with prisoners?

A joyous killer, possibly orgasmic. Note mandatory flagly background, pickle suit, and stupid colorful gewgaws so he looks like a goddam stamp collection. Stern gaze is necessary to become a general. From defending the Constitution to the pleasure of watching Afghans die: The military has come a long way.

I’ll guess he fell just shy of graduating from third grade. He sure ain’t much of a general, no ways, I reckon. Just the fellow I want representing me in the world.

Does General Dworkin-Mattis speak of manhood? Odd, since his military is being badly outfought by the unmanly Afghans that are fun to kill. By the Pentagon’s figures the US military outnumbers the resistance several to one. The US has complete control of the air, enjoying F16s, helicopter gun-ships, transport choppers, and Predator drones, as well as armor, body armor, night-vision gear, heavy weaponry, medevac, hospitals, good food, and PXs. The Afghans have only AKs, RPGs, C4, and balls. Yet they are winning, or at least holding their own. How glorious.

Man for man, weapon for weapon, the Taliban are clearly superior. They take far heavier casualties, but keep on fighting. Their politics are not mine, but they are formidable on the ground. If I were General Dworkin, I’d change my name and go into hiding. Maybe he could wear a veil.

Perhaps the US should recognize that it has a second-rate military at phenomenal cost – an enormous, largely useless national codpiece. It is embarrassing. The Pentagon’s preferred enemies are lightly armed, poorly equipped peasants, which makes for a long war and thus hundreds of billions of dollars in juicy contracts for military industries. Yet the greatest military in history (ask it) gets run out of Southeast Asia, blown up and run out of Lebanon, shot down and run out of Somalia, with Afghanistan a disaster in progress and Iraq claimed as an American victory rather than Shiite. Do the aircraft carriers intimidate North Korea? No. Iran? No. China? No. For this, a trillion dollars a year? ...

Now, it is regarded as treasonous to question that Our Boys are the best trained, best armed, toughest troops in the world, and I’ll probably get punched out in bars for pointing out the awful truth. Let’s imagine an experiment. We take Killing-is-Fun General Mattis-Abzug, and a thousand GIs, and a thousand Taliban, and let them fight it out in any patch of wretched barren mountains of your choosing. On equal terms. What you think? Same weapons.

Good idea, General? You eat what they eat, wear what they wear, they have no medical care, and neither do you. If they get lung-shot and die the hard way, you do too. It will come down to guts and motivation.

Motivation: It counts, general. I believe it was Bedford Forrest who said of some of his troops, “Them cane-brake boys jest plain likes to fight.” I guess there must be just a whole lot of cane in Afghanistan. The Taliban will go to any length to cut your freaking throat because you have been killing their wives and children, fathers and brothers, and you will fight for… for…well. Uh. Big oil, AIPAC, Ann Coulter. Or a promotion for General Mathis-Abzug. Anybody want to put odds on the outcome?

And General, killing them might be a tad less fun when you couldn’t do it from the safety of a gunship. Just a thought, General. ...

Funny how things look if you think about them. Patriots talk about the tragic deaths of young Americans in Afghanistan. Well, okay. Other things being equal, young guys getting shot to death in a pointless war is not a swell idea. I’m against it. In fact, the more you see of it, and I’ve seen a lot, the worse an idea it seems. Of course, a logician might point out that if you didn’t send them to Afghanistan, they wouldn’t die there – would they?

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

"Like all of Europe," writes Pat Buchanan, "Germany grows nervous." Are Germans finally, this late in the day, growing nervous about the five million Muslims, among other foreign groups, they have allowed to populate their country since the 1960s?In Tribalism Returns to Europe, Buchanan describes the grim consequences of the glorious mosaic of multicultural diversity, that was supposed to bring harmony and progress to European nations. How was it ever possible to put aside common sense and buy the notion that a homogeneous people, one of shared history, language, values and disciplines, could benefit from the intrusion of heterogeneous masses of foreigners?

Because the United States was forced to make the best of its unique circumstances, as it dealt from the beginning with several existing ethnic groups, did observers come to think that this was normal? Did others not take notice that during America's best years a common culture prevailed, guided and steered by a dominant Anglo-Euro authority and sensibility? Although beset with social frictions, the country was not confronted with the challenge of an alien civilization in its midst.

In The Multicultural Cult, Thomas Sowell reminds us that, "In countries around the world, and over the centuries, peoples with jarring differences in language, cultures and values have been a major problem and, too often, sources of major disasters for the societies in which they co-exist." He mocks "the cult that has spawned mindless rhapsodies about 'diversity,' without a speck of evidence to substantiate its supposed benefits."

Of course, those who have been following this migrant scenario, know that it's much too late for Germany or any other European country to turn back the clock, as Buchanan has been warning for at least a couple of decades. Globalism may be "in retreat before tribalism," yet, he writes, "Germany’s problem is insoluble. She is running out of Germans. ... For not one European nation, save Iceland and Albania, has had a birth rate for decades that is not below zero population growth. Baby boomer Europe decided in the 1960s and 1970s it wanted La Dolce Vita, not the hassle of children. It had that sweet life. Now the bill comes due. And the bill is the end of their tribes and countries as we have known them."

In Europe, are the populist and nationalist stirrings of recent years just the last protests of those ethnically conscious whites who are, as Buchanan puts it, "raging against the dying of the light?"Read more!

Sunday, October 03, 2010

And so, Joe Sobran has left us, at age 64. Why not at 84 or 94? Why so soon? Unfortunately, ill health had slowed his pen during recent years, and many of us had already come to feel bereft of his profound ideas and insights.I discovered Joe in the 1980s, in those pre-Internet browser days, and remember how I looked forward to each edition of his hard copy newsletter, as well as his column in The Wanderer newspaper. Because I sought out publications that carried his work, I inadvertently wound up learning a lot about the internal struggles going on in the Roman Catholic Church. I'm sure I learned more than I needed to know about particular disputes, like those between the editors of The Wanderer and The Remnant, but it was all enlightening and expanded my education in unexpected ways.

Joe was a fount of knowledge when it came to dissecting the neoconservative takeover and insidious sabotage of this country's conservative movement – the movement I thought I had joined. He was to pay dearly, via a form of secular ex-communication, for his candid observations on these perverters of conservative principles. "Never before," he wrote, "has enthusiasm for concentrated power and violent change been regarded as a conservative trait."

Here are excerpts from a column by Joe, in 2001:

Many of my favorite books are books that shook me up, even angered me, when I first read them. One of these is The Present Age, by the late Robert Nisbet. I knew Bob Nisbet slightly, and he was kind to me, especially considering what a young fool I was. He had the wisdom to know that a young fool can often be transformed by time alone. Or, as the poet William Blake put it, “If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.”

Nisbet, a distinguished sociologist and conservative philosopher, published The Present Age in 1988. Though he hated Communism, he harbored a profound skepticism about the Cold War. In 1988 I still didn’t see how a man could hold both attitudes at the same time. Yet I respected Bob Nisbet enough to listen when he said things I didn’t want to hear.

Chief among those things was this: If the Founders of the American Republic could come back today, they would be most astounded, among all the vast changes that time has wrought, by the militarization of the United States. Since World War I, this country has been totally transformed by war and constant preparation for war.

American militarism has been the chief force in changing a decentralized federal republic into a centralized, bureaucratic monolith. During World War I the United States underwent an amazingly swift metamorphosis. World War II accelerated the alteration. The Cold War completed the transformation from isolated republic to global empire. We became inured to limitless government in the name of “defense” and “national security.”

The shock of September 11 has disposed countless Americans to accept, without demurral or reservation, the claim of new powers by the Federal Government — particularly by the executive branch.

But this disposition was made possible by a new tradition of equating patriotism with militarism, and militarism with “defense.” Most of us no longer recognize the new tradition as a break with our original tradition. So we beg the Federal Government to protect us from terrorism, even if that means letting it usurp powers never assigned or allowed to it.

Instead of asking ourselves the pragmatic question, “How can we defeat terrorism?” we should be asking ourselves the more basic question, “Is this the kind of situation we should let ourselves be maneuvered into?” How did a country that was once determined to remain aloof from the endless conflicts of the Old World manage to get itself embroiled in, of all things, the medieval Crusades?

It’s no concern of mine whether Osama bin Laden speaks with the voice of authentic Islam (whatever that may be) or as a crank who happens to have a lot of followers who have the means and determination to kill people I love. Either way, I want him stopped. The sooner the better.

But — and here’s the rub — stopping him may also create more like him. No doubt the U.S. military campaign will deter countless people from trying to emulate him, but it will also have the opposite effect on a few. And a few terrorists or guerrillas are enough to make a lot of trouble, as we have already seen.

The state of Israel has been cracking down on terrorism, hard, for thirty years. Has it worked? The problem is worse than ever. And that’s what we can expect over the next few decades if our own government follows Israel’s example. If we persist in our folly, will we become wise?

•

And more Sobran reflections from a column in 2002:

The Bush administration's threat to use nuclear weapons against Iraq, though thinly veiled in circumlocutions, should tell us all we need to know about the American image in the world today.

The United States, once so admired over most of the earth, is now seen as a nuclear bully. No wonder it's called "the great Satan" by Muslims and "arrogant" even by its European friends. And President Bush thinks they hate us for "our freedom, our democracy"?

The warning is supposed to deter Iraq from using weapons of mass destruction against American forces and allies, even though (1) we don't know that Iraq has such weapons, and (2) the administration has told us repeatedly that deterrence doesn't work against Iraq.

Iraq hasn't threatened the United States, in spite of Bush's raving on the subject. The United States definitely threatens Iraq. And it has forfeited the right to describe Iraq's or any other regime as "evil."

For decades Americans have worried about nukes falling into "the wrong hands," as if there were "right hands" for weapons of mass murder. Well, those weapons are in the wrong hands now: Bush's hands.

Maybe we should distinguish microterrorism, the terrorism of scattered groups of stateless, relatively helpless people with few other options, from the macroterrorism used by powerful states to back up their huge conventional military forces. When there were two superpowers, each had the plausible excuse of deterrence for amassing nuclear arsenals. Now that excuse is gone: the United States is the only superpower left. And it's still using its nukes.

Maybe it will be said that Bush doesn't really intend to use them. But he is already using them. When a bank robber points a pistol at the teller, he's using it, even if he doesn't fire it. He's also terrifying the bystanders, as Bush is doing.

Though history allegedly ended over a decade ago, we should notice that the U.S. Government is out of control, and it continues to make enemies frequently and unpredictably. Who imagined, when its army was bogged down in Vietnam, that it would go on to wage war (or "keep peace"), not long afterward, from Lebanon to Panama to Iraq to Serbia to Afghanistan and back to Iraq? Does anyone care to place a bet on where it will make future enemies?

Monday, September 20, 2010

See my article, Carnival of Repentance: The Outcome of American Conservatism, at Alternative RightExcerpt:One has to wonder who these people are who will march on Washington to "restore" the country's "honor," as the rally's theme boasted, yet are in the forefront of supporting some of the most dishonorable acts engaged in by their country's interchangeable governments. Just what is special about the moral convictions of these advocates, who fervently sermonize on such issues as patriotism, war, family life, religion, the nature of government, ad nauseam?

[Conservative] critics of the Left cannot bring themselves to find fault with any excess in the Civil Rights movement -- and especially not with its far leftist icon Martin Luther King. “Conservatives” are so terrified of being called “racists” or for that matter, sexists or homophobes, that they devote themselves tirelessly to showing they are just as sensitive as the next PC robot. ...

Such faux conservatives accuse long-dead Democratic presidents, who were well to the right of the current conservative movement, of being more radical than they actually were. It would be no exaggeration to say that Wilson and FDR were far more reactionary than any celebrity in the Tea Party movement. One could only imagine what such antediluvian Democrats would have said if they had heard last year’s “Conservative of the Year,” chosen by Human Events, Dick Cheney, weeping all over the floor about not allowing gays to marry each other. ...

The Tea Party sounds so often like the Left because it is for the most part a product of the Left. Its people were educated in public schools, watch mass entertainment, and have absorbed most of the leftist values of the elite class, to whose rule they object only quite selectively.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Among the more interesting diversions these days is watching the Tea Party evolve, or devolve, depending on your point of view. It's no more than a couple of years old and yet "histories" of the origin of this movement are multiplying.During the Mark Williams fiasco, we saw his version of the Party, i.e., the Tea Party Express, take a thrashing from leaders of something called the Tea Party Federation, which identified itself as a sort of "umbrella" group for all the Tea Parties.

Williams vigorously claimed that, as the co-founder of the Tea Party Express, he had never heard of the Tea Party Federation, and, further, the first time he heard of his group's membership in the "Federation" was when he was thrown out of said "Federation." He described the Tea Party movement as "millions of tea partiers involved in thousands of groups," and claimed that, "Every tea partier is a tea party leader." Translated this means that no group has power over another and certainly has no power to expel anyone from the movement.

But we all knew that nothing works that way for very long, didn't we? And it wasn't long before the proclaimed "leaders" began to emerge.

The Daily Bell offers an enlightening look at another maneuver to influence the direction of the Tea Parties. In Dick Armey's Tea-Party Coup, we learn of the recent activities of the former Congressman. Following are excerpts:

• • •

A number of months ago, we wrote a good many articles about the Tea Party movement. Along with everyone else we were trying to figure out what it was about and why there seemed to be several different movements and no real way of determining who was in charge or what the message was. ...

Fortunately, Dick Armey is willing to set us straight. Here is the history, as he recites it: "Today the ranks of this citizen rebellion can be counted in the millions. The rebellion's name derives from the glorious rant of CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who in February 2009 called for a new 'tea party' from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. By doing so he reminded all of us that America was founded on the revolutionary principle of citizen participation, citizen activism and the primacy of the individual over the government. That's the tea party ethos."

Actually, as we understand it, the Tea Party phenomenon was inspired by the libertarian-republicanism of the Ron Paul presidential campaign that created small activist cells. Rick Santelli – and we have seen his "glorious rant" – had nothing to do with this spontaneous manifestation of anti-state protesting. Santelli's TV statement came much later. The reason we have concentrated on [Armey's] article is because it is a superb example of how the mainstream media reworks memes to make them palatable and useful to the powers-that-be.

The Tea Party, initially, was an amorphous and generalized uprising against the modern welfare/warfare state. It was libertarian in nature and fairly specific about its point of view. Today, that specificity has been mislaid (perhaps the movement is too big for one point of view) and the mythmaking has begun. Thus the Murdoch-controlled Wall Street Journal provides a vast platform for the appropriate tale. And Dick Armey provides it. (In fact Murdoch's media organization is also publisher of a book that Armey has written – Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto.)

Here is the insider's insider, a man who served as Majority Leader of the House of Representatives for a number of years and then as a $750,000 per annum lobbyist (a berth he has now vacated). Yet Armey, by dint of his connections, ability to raise funds and incessant ambition to shape the political horizon to his liking, has attempted to remake himself as political "outsider" and in the process has seemingly launched a takeover of the inchoate Tea Party. (He denies this of course and regularly emphasizes the Tea Party has no leadership – but certainly he is available to help.)

Not only has he somehow become a high profile, de facto leader of a movement and a definer of the history of a movement that deliberately has no organizational core, he has somehow managed to link himself to a Contract From America that many so-called Tea Party political candidates have "signed." The idea is that the Contract From America emerged out of the inchoate opinions of thousands of Tea Party activists and then were codified by Armey and his staff a the Tea-Party oriented Freedomworks, which he founded in the mid 2000s. ...

The military-industrial complex [whose expenditures are not mentioned in the Contract From America] is one of the largest appendages of the modern American warfare-welfare state. The lack of inclusion of central banking and military expenditures makes this Contract From America fairly useless in our humble opinion.

In fact, from our perspective, this article grants the opportunity to see clearly how a power elite dominant social theme is shaped in modern times. Murdoch provides the platform. Dick Armey poses as a radical Libertarian and rewrites history to his liking.

Read the Contract From America and the rest of this article here.Read more!

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Did you know that baseball coaches of minority races are found more often coaching at first base than at third base? (Now what might this mean?!) And further, the third-base coaches become team Managers more often than first-base coaches. (Aha!) From the 1964 Civil Rights Act straight to the lunacy of today's quotas and discrimination lawsuits, one never knows what to expect next.In Bean-Counters and Baloney, Thomas Sowell shows how the multiculturalists' relentless recitation of statistics is driven only by the desire to demonstrate "social injustices." No matter what! Nothing, of course, must suggest that there are genuine differences between and among ethnic and racial groups. Following are excerpts:

• • •

The bean-counters have struck again – this time in the sports pages. Two New York Times sport writers have discovered that baseball coaches from minority groups are found more often coaching at first base than at third base. Moreover, third-base coaches become managers more often than first-base coaches.

This may seem to be just another passing piece of silliness. But it is part of a more general bean-counting mentality that turns statistical differences into grievances. The time is long overdue to throw this race card out of the deck and start seeing it for the gross fallacy that it is.

At the heart of such statistics is the implicit assumption that different races, sexes and other subdivisions of the human species would be proportionately represented in institutions, occupations and income brackets if there was not something strange or sinister going on.

Although this notion has been repeated by all sorts of people, from local loudmouths on the street to the august chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States, there is not one speck of evidence behind it and a mountain of evidence against it.

Ask the bean-counters where in this wide world have different groups been proportionally represented. They can't tell you. In other words, something that nobody can demonstrate is taken as a norm, and any deviation from that norm is somebody's fault! ...

At our leading engineering schools – M.I.T., CalTech, etc. – whites are under-represented and Asians over-represented. Is this anti-white racism or pro-Asian racism? Or are different groups just different?

As for baseball, I have long noticed that there are more blacks playing centerfield than third-base. Since the same people hire centerfielders and third-basemen, it is hard to argue that racism explains the difference. No one says it is racism that explains why blacks are over-represented and whites under-represented in basketball. Bean-counters only make a fuss when there is a disparity that fits their vision or their agenda. ...

In countries around the world, all sorts of groups differ from each other in all sorts of ways, from rates of alcoholism to infant mortality, education and virtually everything that can be measured, as well as in some things that cannot be quantified. If black and white Americans were the same, they would be the only two groups on this planet who are the same. ...

The bean-counters are everywhere, pushing the idea that differences show injustices committed by society. As long as we keep buying it, they will keep selling it – and the polarization they create will sell this country down the river.

Friday, August 13, 2010

So, even the supposedly tough-minded talk show host Laura Schlessinger dissolves like putty when confronted with the noise of disapproval coming from the multicultural mob, for her use of the proscribed "Nigger" word. But what else could we expect on the heels of the black woman who telephoned the show, to get advice about her own "racist" white husband, his relatives and friends?We've learned that even the take-no-prisoners Dr. Laura now accepts the notion that there is ONE word in the English language that is allowed to be spoken by members of only ONE group. Can we expect her to join with those insufferable whites who delight in telling of their disdain for the taboo word, and how they refuse to use it under any circumstances? "I won't even say it in private," they proudly prattle on, waiting for the pat of approval.

Dr. Laura might as well join in the campaign already underway to abolish the word "Nigger" from the lips of all non-blacks. Perhaps she will endorse a federal law to punish any non-black caught spewing it. This could sort of be an expansion of the New York City Council's Resolution of 2007, in which the public use of the word was symbolically "banned." Of course, this ban has meant nothing to those blacks who practice no restraint in their use of the prohibited term and are primarily responsible for extending its life, by keeping the epithet fresh in the popular lexicon.

Here are whites running from the accursed expression, while blacks fill New York City's air with it, and even sanctify the word. The gay website Queerty.com had fun by mocking the Council's ridiculous Resolution. Claiming that New York City was soon to be a "Nigger-free zone," the editor asked, "If the council's all about cleaning up people's politically incorrect potty mouths, where are the bans on spic, faggot, kike, chink and all those other nasties?"

Of course, those "other nasties" are generally terms well known to be spewed forth by blacks, more often than by members of any other group.

Most countries in Europe already have "word crime" laws, as part of their pernicious "hate crime" packages. Why not bring such innovation to these shores and join the Europeans? But, what am I thinking? All assaults on blacks (by non-blacks, of course) are first investigated to learn whether or not the "Nigger" word was hurled before the blows came. Then, thanks to "hate crime" statutes, the assaulter can be subject to extra penalties for the use of the term. Ooh, what he said! Since most assaults on blacks are perpetrated by fellow blacks, I wonder if there are any pre-assault verbiage investigations when the perp has an abundance of melanin. Want to guess?

By retreating on this issue of free speech, do whites really think that the cowardice they have displayed since the 1960s needs to be revealed any further? It is white cowardice that gave us those facets of that 1964 Civil Rights Act, that went over the top by stifling the movement for self-sufficiency and taking the wind out of the economic sails of blacks, while forcing whites to pick up the slack. It is white cowardice that made possible that outrageously unconstitutional Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. And how can we even keep count of the endless Affirmative Action and Quota laws around the land, that have undone any pretense at instilling fairness in society? All gifts of white cowardice.

Does Dr. Laura and her ilk really think the world needs any further evidence that whites are willing to submit to anything, but anything, to avoid offending black "sensitivities?" We get it. You will do anything, from overturning Articles in the Constitution, to denying free speech rights even to yourselves. We get it.

It is whites who fell to their knees in the 1960s, and have never gotten up. What fear of rioting and mayhem can do! And, even when a group declares, WE can do this, but YOU cannot, the whites' response isn't "That's what you think!" but, "Yes, Master, whatever you say." Dr. Laura confirms the three- to four-decade slide into docile obedience.

One of the games of the multiculturalists is to keep up front certain words and terminologies that are deemed off-limits to whites. In this way, whites can be raked over the coals whenever one strays. In 2005, black columnist Lovell Estell scorned the hypocrisy that he said envelops the word "Nigger," and offered his views on the forced resignation of a white baseball coach.

Estell suggested that in our PC-driven land, no white can be allowed exoneration, if he can be persecuted. Scoffing at the notion of the word "Nigger" as the "ultimate insult," he observed that "Most of the people who have called me one haven't been white folks." In defending the coach, Estell claimed that the man had never mistreated any of his black ballplayers, and was guilty only of "bad judgment" and an "idiotic faux pas," and, therefore, should be allowed to resume his career.

Did meaningful numbers of whites join in Estell's protest to reinstate the white coach? No, they ran, as usual, to hide under the bed or in a closet, abandoning the coach to his private hell. And, of course, like Dr. Laura, Senator Trent Lott, Doug Tracht (The Greaseman), and Don Imus, the coach apologized, and apologized, and apologized. But, hey, that's what white folks do.

In the early part of her dialogue with the black caller, who complained about whites making use of the Forbidden Word, Dr. Laura made an observation that would occur to anyone with common sense. She ruefully remarked, "Oh, I see. So, a word is restricted to race." But it was not too long afterward that she issued her initial apology, in which she whined that, after she realized she had "articulated the N-word all the way out," she was too upset to finish the show.

A final thought about the idiot black woman caller who spurred Dr. Laura's intemperate remarks. What kind of a dimwit, who marries out of her race, discovers that her white husband, his white relatives, and his white friends consider his black wife (namely, her) a daily punching bag for their humor, and then calls a stranger on the radio for advice? Is the husband trying to let the dense wife know that he's had enough of her, and desires to move on? Maybe it's time to take a hint, lady.Read more!

Thursday, August 05, 2010

In our 2008 post, Birthright citizenship is not constitutional, California State University Professor Edward Erler asks, "If the American Indians, who were certainly born in this country, were not considered automatic citizens by the Constitution's framers, how can it be that the offspring of foreigners who arrive here become automatic citizens?"

Erler debunks the fallacy of believing that anyone born within the geographical limits of the United States is automatically subject to its jurisdiction, and goes on to explain what the Constitution's 14th Amendment means by a person being "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."Jurisdiction is understood as owing exclusive political allegiance, Erler explains, not simply subject to American laws or courts. A foreign child born in the US is subject to the same jurisdiction to which is parent[s] are subject – that of their native country to which they owe political allegiance.

From this, the question is raised, Why would the newborn baby of an American couple, whose company happened to assign them to the Beijing office, be considered a Chinese citizen? Why wouldn't such a baby, instead, be subject, as are his parents, to the jurisdiction of the United States?

Children's allegiance "should follow that of their parents during their minority," observes Erler. Further, he argues, it is difficult to fathom how any sovereign nation could allow any other policy.

As to Mexican illegals, Wall indicates that the key to resolution is proving that the children of aliens are not completely "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States." This can be done by using the laws of Mexico. He writes:

According to the Mexican Constitution, Capitulo II, Articulo 30, the child born to, or begotten by, a Mexican is a Mexican, regardless of where he is born.

The Mexicans by birth shall be…The individuals born abroad from Mexican parents who were born within national territory, from a Mexican father who was born within national territory or from a Mexican mother who was born within national territory…The Individuals born abroad from naturalized Mexican parents, from a naturalized Mexican father or from a naturalized Mexican mother…

Thus, any child born to a Mexican parent—either mother or father, regardless of whether that parent is a natural-born Mexican or naturalized Mexican—regardless of where he is born, is considered a Mexican.

And Mexican consulates have the authority to issue documentation to children born to Mexicans outside of Mexico, to confirm it.

Doug Newman at The Fountain of Truth is one of those rare practicing Christians one can truly admire. He has no truck with foolish believers in "My country, right or wrong" idolatry, or the immature ranters of USA! USA! Newman knows a warped Christian mind when he encounters one. That audacious warmongers invoke the name of Christ in their deathly causes angers him.On his blog he reflects on this country's misguided actions centered around the 9/11 attacks, as well as the fall-out from the proposed Islamic center in lower Manhattan, and offers some provocative points:

• It has been centuries since a Muslim country conquered a non-Muslim country. The Islam world is militarily irrelevant. 911 was not a military invasion, but a suicide attack. The hijackers are all DEAD. You cannot take over a country, force everyone to speak Arabic, impose Islamic law, etc., when you are DEAD!• A few thousand gangbangers who do not even control the government of Afghanistan are not going to come and take over the mightiest economic and military power on earth.• When you station troops in 130 countries and throw your weight around militarily the way America does, don't complain when a lot of people hate you. And when you start wars with countries that haven't done anything to you and kill countless thousands of innocent people, don't complain when people hate you. You reap what you sow!• Our liberty is not at all threatened by "radical Islam," but rather by the establishment that has ruled this country for close to a century. The greatest threat of all comes from the millions of Americans who have allowed this establishment so much power with no regard to the consequences.• In the Great Commission - Matthew 28: 18-20 - Jesus tells us to "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." He doesn't tell us to bomb the crap out of countries that have never done anything to us and kill countless thousands of innocent people!• The proper, moral, constitutional response to 9/11 was a Letter of Marque and Reprisal, that is, a warrant to go after the specific perps. It was NOT to start wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, threaten war with Iran, attack Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia and - are you cluing in? - kill countless thousands of innocent people!• Millions of Christians are so biblically illiterate that they are easy prey for the Falwells, Hagees, Robertsons, Dobsons, etc., and their promotion of aggressive war as Christian. You reap what you sow and when you live by the sword, you die by the sword.An afterthoughtIt sure doesn't take much to get those "easily led" evangelical types stirred up, does it? Just a few well-placed, inflammatory words from their trustworthy talk show host leaders and the stuff hits the fan – even to the point of suggesting the burning of another religion's holy book. Holy cow! Never mind the ethical issues here, how do you get this simpleminded?Read more!

In The Year America Dissolved, economist Paul Craig Roberts indulges in a dystopian fantasy of life in America in the not-so-distant year of 2017:

• • •

It was 2017. Clans were governing America.

The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.

As society broke down, the police became warlords. The state police broke apart, and the officers were subsumed into the local forces of their communities. The newly formed tribes expanded to encompass the relatives and friends of the police.

The dollar had collapsed as world reserve currency in 2012 when the worsening economic depression made it clear to Washington’s creditors that the federal budget deficit was too large to be financed except by the printing of money.

With the dollar’s demise, import prices skyrocketed. As Americans were unable to afford foreign-made goods, the transnational corporations that were producing offshore for US markets were bankrupted, further eroding the government’s revenue base.

The government was forced to print money in order to pay its bills, causing domestic prices to rise rapidly. Faced with hyperinflation, Washington took recourse in terminating Social Security and Medicare and followed up by confiscating the remnants of private pensions. This provided a one-year respite, but with no more resources to confiscate, money creation and hyperinflation resumed.

Organized food deliveries broke down when the government fought hyperinflation with fixed prices and the mandate that all purchases and sales had to be in US paper currency. Unwilling to trade appreciating goods for depreciating paper, goods disappeared from stores.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

In The Rape of Europa: How the West is Overrun, Mark Hackard describes the role played by the U.S. government in its ongoing drive to eliminate Russia as a rival and gain access to Central Asia's energy resources. Washington, of course, cares nothing about the consequences of policies that must inevitably result in altered population demographics throughout Europe. Following are excerpts:

• • •

The postmodern assault on traditional culture and Christianity that Poland and other Washington-allied East European nations are beginning to experience is already far advanced on the rest of the Continent, where secular hedonism and pop-democracy are more deeply entrenched. The European Union itself is but a grotesque parody of Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire. While EU governing elites and the complacent masses they rule carry ultimate responsibility for apostasy and decline, it is necessary that we recognize another driving force at work: U.S. power.

By its role in the NATO alliance and its network of bases, the United States has for 65 years shaped European strategic and political discourse and retained its dominant position. There is a shared, institutionalized worldview at work fostered by successive generations of transatlantic elites, from politicians and corporate leaders to policy experts and military officers. This may seem a rather obvious point, but it is crucial to acknowledge the ideological aspect of U.S. hegemony -- perpetuation of the liberalism and materialism that so define the “free world”. ...

With Marxism discredited at the end of the bipolar era, only one messianic ideology was left standing. In the two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, America has gloried in the triumph of the liberal revolution and ceaselessly proselytized its globalization. Perhaps the most important target of this effort has been the former Soviet space. To eliminate Moscow as a rival and gain Central Asia’s energy resources would bring Washington to a level of dominion over the world never yet achieved. ...

The comprehensive military presence the United States enjoys in Europe provides it not only unquestioned leadership in the “Euro-Atlantic Community”, but also a platform for expansion into Eurasia’s heartland and the prosecution of wars in the Middle East. The foreign-policy analyst Doug Bandow wonders aloud why the Army’s V Corps remains stationed in Heidelberg rather than stateside:

About 52,000 American troops are in Germany. Obviously the most populous and prosperous country at the center of Europe doesn't need defending. The likelihood of Russian troops marching on Berlin and clambering up the Bundestag building is somewhat akin to that of the Martians landing and conducting a modern War of the Worlds.

The only other reason to have forces in Germany is because that country is closer to other places where Washington wants to send U. S. personnel -- but shouldn't. German bases once devoted to preventing a Red Army conquest are now handling casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan. However, if the U. S. wasn't promiscuously warring on other nations, it wouldn't need a German way-station in Europe. ...

No study of Europe’s subjection to transatlantic elites would be complete without mentioning the use of Muslims to further divide and demoralize its peoples. For the past 30 years, beginning with covert U.S. support to the Afghan mujahideen, Washington has courted Islamic power as a vehicle of influence in Eurasia, and Europe is no exception in this regard. Through the course the 1990s NATO bombarded Serbs and introduced peacekeeping troops into the Balkans to create Muslim states Bosnia and Kosovo on the carcass of Tito’s Yugoslavia. ...

U.S. diplomacy also celebrates Turkey, with a foothold in Thrace and its two million countrymen in Germany, as an up-and-coming European nation. Washington has long advocated Turkey’s entry into the EU, with all its attendant consequences for native European populations. ...

Faced with waxing Turkish power and assertive and growing populations of Muslim migrants, Europeans may yet react and begin to reclaim their lands and heritage. But they must know that in their resistance, it is entirely likely they will receive not U.S. support, but hostility to their cause and possibly armed intervention on behalf of Muslim belligerents. ... The tribes of Europa are told to forget their past, reject their faith and ethnic identity, and their very place in the Cosmos. “Place no hope in the future,” they are commanded, “for your replacements have arrived.”

House of Representatives resolution 1553, introduced by Congressional Republicans, and currently working its way through the system will endorse an Israeli attack on Iran, which would be going to war by proxy as the US would almost immediately be drawn into the conflict when Tehran retaliates.

The resolution provides explicit US backing for Israel to bomb Iran, stating that Congress supports Israel’s use of “all means necessary…including the use of military force”. The resolution is non-binding, but it is dazzling in its disregard for the possible negative consequences that would ensue for the hundreds of thousands of US military and diplomatic personnel currently serving in the Near East region.

Even the Pentagon opposes any Israeli action against Iran, knowing that it would mean instant retaliation against US forces in Iraq and also in Afghanistan. The resolution has appeared, not coincidentally, at the same time as major articles by leading neoconservatives Reuel Marc Gerecht and Bill Kristol calling for military action. AIPAC thinks it is wonderful.

Ironically, the push against Iran comes at a time when the National Intelligence Estimate on the country is being finished. It might come out as soon as August, but it will be secret and its conclusions will either be leaked or released in summary. My sources inside the intelligence community insist that it will support the 2007 NIE that concluded that Iran no longer has a weapons program.

The White House has delayed the process seeking harder language to justify a range of options against Iran, including a military strike, but the analysts are reported to be resisting. So we spend $100 billion on intelligence annually and then ignore the best judgments on what is taking place. Might as well use a Ouija board.Read more!

Philip Weiss brings our attention to a CNN report on the eviction of Bedouins from a village in southern Israel. CNN staff writes:Police evicted 200 Bedouins from their homes in a southern Israeli village on Tuesday and demolished their dwellings, an act decried by residents who said they are on ancestral land. The move occurred five miles north of Beer Sheva in a village called Al-Araqeeb, an enclave not recognized by the state of Israel.

Witnesses told CNN that the Israeli forces arrived at the village accompanied by busloads of civilians who cheered as the dwellings were demolished. They said armed police deployed with tear gas, water cannon, two helicopters and bulldozers. But Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said there were no disturbances and the operation went according to plan.

Weiss also cites a quote by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at a recent Cabinet meeting. He sounded a warning that this was "a situation in which a demand for national rights will be made from some quarters inside Israel, for example in the Negev, should the area be left without a Jewish majority. Such things happened in the Balkans, and it is a real threat."

We're aware of the great delight that Zionists take in comparing the U.S. dispossession of the Indians to the Israelis' treatment of the Arabs in their region. Supposedly, this removes any right for an American to criticize, even though it's our billions of tax dollars that make the cruelties now being exacted on the Palestinians and others in the territory possible. Let's say Israel stops taking U.S. money, even to the point of paying for those Caterpillar machines, and let's see how effective their human removal will be.

What do you think the chances are that a U.S. official today would be heard to say that gentile whites must secure every region and that no area should be left without a "white gentile majority?" We can bet that 99% of the Jews in this country would go ballistic, yet they praise such an approach in dear, little, persecuted Israel. Gentile whites in the U.S. can, by their actions, secure all-white areas to live in, but they'd better not talk about it openly.

Bedouins, of course, have lived in the Negev region for centuries, and claim, as they do in the story above, to have "original deeds to the land." Did they get their deeds from a Sky God, too? I wonder.Read more!

In The Arizona Lesson: What the state’s experiment with the rule of law has already taught us, Heather Mac Donald offers her observations on why the Los Angeles Times smeared Arizona Law SB 1070. Although her article was written just a couple of days before Judge Susan Bolton blocked from enforcement certain parts of the law, Mac Donald's article is still pertinent for its insights on why the media, most of whose members support open borders, ignore or embellish basic facts about immigration. Following is an excerpt:As the start date of Arizona’s new immigration law, SB 1070, approaches, the Los Angeles Times has published an article on a nearly three-month-old homicide in Phoenix that no one but the victim’s family claims had anything to do with Arizona’s immigration initiative—not the Hispanic neighbors of the alleged killer and his victim, not the police, not even illegal-alien advocacy groups.

“It’s just weird to hear them say he’s racist,” one of the suspect’s Hispanic acquaintances marvels. The suspect had expressed his opposition to Arizona’s law just days before the May 6 shooting; he had invited his Hispanic neighbors to Thanksgiving last year. As for the victim, he “did not get shot because he was Mexican,” a local civil rights activist maintains.

And yet the Times has put the story on its front page as part of its coverage of SB 1070. Why? The official reason: as “an illustration of how incidents in the state now get interpreted through the prism of the new law.” The real reason: to suggest that the Arizona law—which officially authorizes a police officer, during a lawful police stop, to check the immigration status of people whom he suspects of being in the country illegally—is fueling a wave of possibly homicidal hatred against Hispanics. Evidence for this proposition, which has been embraced by editorialists and activists across the country? Zero.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

What is so disheartening about people like Mark Williams is that they have imbibed every cliché taught them by the Left, and yet they call themselves "conservative." For instance, his notions about the early NAACP and its origins, and of W.E.B. Du Bois, is boilerplate propaganda. He has obviously consecrated this history, as it was taught to him. Read more!

Sunday, July 18, 2010

As liberals wax hysterical over Arizona's proposed immigration law, Michael Lind offers some sobering counsel to his fellow progressives, especially those known as the "commentariat." It appears to him that too many liberals have gone beyond denouncing what they view as "racial profiling" in certain laws, to condemning all immigration enforcement law. In Open borders or high-wage welfare state, Lind reflects on how far removed such thinking is "not only from the American public as a whole, but also from most Democratic and independent voters."He writes: Since the economy crashed in the fall of 2008, public attitudes toward immigration, both legal and illegal, have been hardening. Between 2008 and the summer of 2009, the number of respondents telling Gallup that immigration should be decreased shot up from 39 percent to 50 percent.

And then there are those Democrats who actually support an increase in immigration. These are the people who worry Lind and he describes them: The mere 15 percent of Democrats who favor increased immigration make up the overwhelming majority of Democratic pundits, think tank operatives and other opinion leaders. Indeed, it appears that many prominent progressives are opposed to any enforcement of U.S. immigration laws at all.

He cites the liberal Nation magazine, whose provocative article, Arizona Burning, shows how clearly the left tends to view immigration policy as a race issue. Lind asks, Do the editors of the Nation want the U.S. to have any laws regulating entry by citizens of other countries into the U.S. or not? If so, then they have an obligation to explain the methods of law enforcement that they support.

He then offers sensible suggestions on how to make enforcement work, that would include reliable identification of foreign nationals and punishment of employers who break immigration laws. Lind cites the conflict so often expressed on the part of liberals, who don't want any forms of identification or government inspections of work places.

So, do they want American workers to be protected? he asks. Do liberals, by opposing workplace raids, really want to be on the side of meat-packing companies and union-busting janitorial firms that violate hard-won labor laws?

And Lind offers a zinger for the left: If progressives really believe that the U.S. should become the only sovereign country in the world that does not assert the right to regulate entry to its territory and participation in its labor markets, they should team up with the only other tiny sect in America that believes in open borders: right-wing libertarians.

Lind chastises those liberals who claim a concern for improving the lot of the foreign poor by keeping our borders open to them: It is surprising that any progressives are naive enough to fall for the insincere claim of conservatives and libertarians that their cheap-labor policies are motivated by altruistic concern for the foreign poor. ... The faux-humanitarian arguments of the open-borders, cheap-labor right come as part of a larger policy package that genuine progressives should reject as a whole.

Lind makes it clear that he is well aware of other pressing agendas among the left:

Much of the left's opposition to immigration law enforcement, of course, is based on a strategic appeal to the Latino vote, not on a rational analysis of what sort of immigration policy best suits U.S. labor market conditions in the 21st century. If most Latinos began voting for Republicans, undoubtedly many Democrats who object to border and workplace enforcement would fall silent pretty quickly.

Loss of the Issues & Views website

Due to the fact that the owners of the company that has hosted Issues & Views - The Website, since its creation in 1997, have decided to host only sites in Alaska, the website linked to this blog is probably lost.

Issues & Views - The Website (www.issues-views.com) contained hundreds of articles first printed in the hard copy Issues & Views newsletter (1983 through 2002), along with newer articles composed in the 1990s.

Although the former host has re-directed clicks to the website to this blog, it does not appear that there will be any rescue of the website's files or database. For this reason, surfers looking for issues-views.com are landing on this blog. (The website is currently being cached by Google.)

I have learned that an archived version of the website is available on Wayback Machine. Unfortunately, this last capture was performed in 2008, so it lacks certain minor deletions and editing done in 2009 and 2010. However, anyone searching for a particular article should be able to find it there.

- Elizabeth (issues@issues.cnc.net)

Racism is not "sin"

Over the years, as whites have worked to defend themselves against the charge of "racism," they have validated this slur by giving it greater importance than it deserves, and thereby helped to institutionalize it as the world's greatest "sin." As to genuine sin, harboring negative thoughts concerning some group is much further down the list of human deficiencies than bombing Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and Hamburg, or hacking to death with machetes the men, women and children of an enemy tribe. Now, those are sins! Seeking to force "diversity" down the throats of an unreceptive segment of society is the religious mission of rabid, agenda-driven ideologues. None of this apparent concern for "social justice" has ever been about virtue. It's about power.

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Jacobs and Potter on the un-American nature of "hate crime" legislation.